Halloween Cocktail Night!

Halloween Cocktail Night -- something of a 'ladies' night' this week. With so many Hallowwen parties and events happened over the weekend, Arjen and I had only 2 (but 2 excellent) cocktailers. The theme was classic Halloween; its legends, lore, history... ingredients such as lizard's gizzards, eye of newt, bottled skunk fart, bat whiskers, troll teeth, mummified toenails were all welcome...

Having only 4 cocktailers made it possible this week to play a game... the only possible choice was 'Witches of Salem' which we lost miserably (a cooperative game) but which was very atmospheric considering the occasion!
The first drink was Arjen's Gluhsangria. Halloween, being the evening during which the threshold between world's is the thinnest. In between summer solstice and winter solstice, all Hallow's Eve is the perfect time to blend the idea of a snowy, winter evening in Germany with a lazy, warm summer evening in Spain. Hence, Arjen created a drink that was a mixture of German holiday Glug and Spanish sangria. The result was a delicious, spiced red wine with notes of both Christmas and summertime!

Gluhsangria:
- put a clove in a wineglass
- 1/2 ounce of Calvados
- 1/4 ounce of orange curacao
- fill the rest of the glass with red wine
- garnish with a slice of orange and a lemon zest

Naturally, Lunchbox Lissenberg was in attendance at the party-- searching for laps and as much attention as she could garnish.

A little apple tart never goes amiss on these Fall evenings. 

Astrid made a cocktail in memory of sweet little Mama-- her sweet white rat who passed away last Wednesday.

This is little Mama at a party at Astrid's last year.

Mama's Cocktail:
-2 parts spiced rum
- 1 1/2 part yoghurt liquor, shaken over ice.
- decorate with fresh vanilla (for a tail)
- or otherwise add a bit vanilla extract. I sprinkled some cocoa on top.

RIP sweet, little Mama!

Lunchy meeting the Mama doll-- not initially a happy
union...





 But how quickly hatred can turn to love.... and other things.

My drink was next--- although as always I needed Arjen to do the hard work. The idea was to create something that looked like candy corn-- in the absence of having REAL candy corn. It would be a sweet, dessert drink, non-alcoholic - that I could drink too.

We used food coloring to make the bottom layer orange. Because of the thickness of the drink,the layers sat atop each other and really did look like candy corn. If we were in the U.S. we certainly would have finished the drink by laying a few pieces of candy corn on top.

Tah-dah... four festive Candy Cornucopias!

The Candy Cornacopia:
- choose a flavor of sorbet (we used pear, and was light yellow in color)
- take a handful of ice cubes and crush them (or put them in a blender)
- add a 1/4 pint of the sorbet
- add a glass of apple juice
- add orange food coloring if the sorbet isn't already orange
- spoon into bottom of the glasses
- prepare the yellow layer the same way except use orange juice instead of apple juice. Add yellow food coloring unless (like our pear sorbet) it already is yellow
- top with whipped cream

Really fresh and fruity-- and the flavors will depend on the sorbet, so there's a lot of room for play. 

Of course you could always add vodka to make this slushie into a proper cocktail.

 So to wrap up, it was a quiet, and lovely, very festive Halloween cocktail eve. We were defeated by witches, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely in the meantime.

These quieter nights make for a nice, cozy atmosphere-- very sleep-inducing. 

Some of us were over-relaxed, but isn't that what autumn is for... slowing down a little?

Next week--- the theme to be announced!